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Saturday, June 29, 2013

Another lovely tea cake: blueberry and apple crumble cake

I just love baking tea cakes. Maybe perhaps, I'm bringing out my inner girly-side, but there's just something so pretty and elegant about tea cakes. The apple tea cake was sure a favourite! Tea cakes are incredibly easy to whip up, and can impress your guests.

Cakes and muffins, topped off with streusel/crumb topping are the best part in my opinion. I have been thoroughly enjoying my holidays, and on the day I made this cake, I was sitting on the couch, watching a movie. In my hand, I had a plate with a thick slice of the apple and blueberry crumble cake, with moist crumbs falling off with each bite, and munching on the crumble... Mmm! My ideal day always revolves around eating cakes and brownies.

The topping is one of the best crumbles I've had. The quantity it made was quite a bit, and I used all of it up, so there was a thick coating of crumble.. Even my second sister loved the cake because of the crunchy top (and the moist butter cake with blueberries and apples itself). The cake barely lasted 2 days in the house! Okay.. Partially to me eating a lot of it when it first came out of the oven, but I didn't continue to eat the cake the next day!! WHATEVER, all my family members always accuse me of eating the most of something like ice cream or chocolate. It's what you get for being the youngest.. The youngest is always the easiest to bully and blame on. If you're the youngest of the family, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180 C/350 F. Lightly butter a 22.5 x 12.5 cm (9 x 5 inch) loaf pan, and line it with baking paper, leaving an overhang on the two opposite sides and butter the paper as well.
2. Make the crumble by rubbing the butter and flour together with the mixture, until it resembles coarse bread crumbs. I actually used a food processor, which does the job much quicker. Stir in the sugar, oats and cinnamon and refrigerate if needed.
3. For the cake, thinly slice the apple and place into a bowl. Drizzle with lemon juice to stop the apple slices from turning brown.
4. In a large bowl of an electric mixer, cream together butter and sugars until light and fluffy.Add the eggs, and beat one at a time. Beat in vanilla, then sift the flour, baking powder and salt over the mixture and fold in. Fold in the almond meal.
5. Pour into the prepared pan and smooth the surface. I put some of the batter in first, then pressed in some blueberries, then layered it with the rest of the batter. Not necessary, But I liked it better that way. Arrange the apple slices and blueberries on top of the batter, and push some of the fruit down onto the batter.
6. Sprinkle with the crumble, and bake for about 1 hour or until golden and a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake, comes out slightly moist.
7. Cool completely in the pan over a wire rack.Adapted from Technicolor kitchen

8 comments:

I think that would taste lovely with creme fraiche (mainly because I love creme fraiche!), it looks beautifully moist in those lovely photographs. Is a tea cake a certain type of cake or just a cake you have with tea? When I hear tea cake I think of toasted tea cakes with butter on. My favourite fruitcake is probably chocolate fruitcake with toffee icing, it's amazing! (though possibly not as lovely as this). I'll be buying some blue berries to make this tomorrow!from Emily x

That's a great idea, although sadly at home, it's all finished already :( But next time I'd make it with that! A tea cake in Australia a sponge cake that you typically serve during morning tea, or afternoon tea. You don't literally need to have it with tea, but it's served during tea time if that makes sense. It's kind of like coffee cake in a way,I used to think that coffee cake actually HAD coffee in it. That sounds amazing, I love toffee icing (and I have a sticky date pudding recipe coming up)and well, I'm a chocoholic :) Let me know how it goes, would love to see it!